Friday, December 29, 2006

I don't normally post much purely personal stuff on this blog, but I can't help noting that ten years ago today I married the most wonderful woman in the entire world, and that not an hour has gone by that I wouldn't have gladly married her all over again.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

With this whole Saturday Systematic X thing, not all words work equally well, of course. Typing "love" into my iTunes search box gets me -- unsurprisingly -- a huge number of results -- 128, in fact. No problem with that, I suppose, except that I don't feel like typing in 128 !@#$% entries. Similarly, typing in "night" got me 67 entries -- including every single song from the album A Hard Day's Night. (The iTunes search function searches not only title and but artist, album, and various other things too, I think.) Again, just too gorram many.

I suppose that, given the season, I should have made this a "Christmas" edition... but I only had three songs with "Christmas" in the title, and it didn't seem fun enough. (Yeah, only three: whadya want, I'm Jewish.)

So a certain selectivity is required. If the first one produces too many results (or too few), try again -- and wait until you get a manageable one, and blog that.

Like, for example, "wait", which produced a list of 15 songs -- a reasonable size. So, in alphabetical order by title, we have:

A few notes: the Beatles rendition of "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" is from the Live at the BBC set that came out some years ago. (I actually once had the Buddy Holly version... but that was on cassette, and who listens to cassettes any more? I should get that again sometime.) And if you're wondering why "Jersey Girl" by Bruce Springsteen is on that list... it was actually written by Tom Waits.

As always, this is a meme: if you have an iPod and a blog (or the equivalents), do it for yourself, whether or not it's Saturday, either on the word "wait" or any other; report the results; and leave a link in the comments.

Also, what great "wait" songs am I missing? Anything I simply can't wait to get?**

_____________________* I am so not going to apologize for this.** I'm not going to apologize for that, either.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

As part of today's Carl Sagan memorial blogswarm (via) marking the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, I thought I'd write, not about Carl Sagan directly, but about a memorial to him -- one that happens to be my favorite piece of public art in my home town of Ithaca, New York. Sagan, of course, taught at Cornell (located in Ithaca) for many years, which is his connection to the town; hence the location for the memorial.

The sculpture in question is the Sagan Planet Walk, a scale model of the solar system on a 5,000,000,000:1 scale. The sun is represented as a window in a large black monolith:

It's about six feet tall (I'm afraid the photos are just what I happen to have, I have no time today to go get new ones, and I didn't think to get a photo of someone standing next to it.) It's in the middle of the Ithaca Commons, a pedestrian-only walkway at the center of downtown Ithaca. The next for monoliths (which are each a bit smaller) are all on the same block. In fact, in the background of the photo above, you can see the Earth and Mars megaliths:

(The Venus monolith is directly behind the Sun monolith in this shot; Mercury is off to the left, beyond the edge of the photo.)

Each of the planets is represented by a slightly smaller grey monolith (except Pluto (yes, this was back before Pluto's demotion) which has a monolith matching that of the Sun, to anchor the other end of the Planet Walk). Here, for example, is the one for Mercury:

And here's the one for Jupiter:

The window in the center of each Monolith is identical in size to the window which represents the sun, in order to give a sense of scale. The actual planet is represented by a to-scale size model of the planet embedded in the window. In most cases, you can only see it by going right up to the window and looking very closely; it's often hard to tell the planet from a speck of dirt (although the planet is in the center of each window, and of course you can tell if you look closely enough.) But the larger planets you can see even from a few feet away. For example, here is an enlargement of the Jupiter window above:

And here is an enlargement for the Saturn window:

For Jupiter, they also include several moons (the four big ones, I think) and the Saturn window includes Triton; but you can't see them with the level of detail in these pictures. Incidentally, in those two pictures, Jupiter looks smaller than Saturn, but that's a result of the framing and angle of the photos; in the actual monument, Jupiter is quite clearly bigger than Saturn (aside from the latter's rings, which even things out a bit.)

On the front of each monolith is a plaque giving information about the planet. There's also a podcast by Bill Nye which you can listen to as you do the walk (although I've never heard it -- it's fairly new -- even though I've done the walk more than a dozen times from end to end, not counting passing it just strolling around town (we live near Uranus, so I go by parts of the walk all the time.))

What's really cool about the memorial, however -- it's purpose, really -- is not possible to capture in photos, and that's the visceral sense of the sheer size of the space, and of the extraordinary emptiness of it. It takes about half an hour to walk from the Sun (at the heart of downtown) to Pluto, right in front of the Sciencenter, the local science museum. But walking it you imagine almost all of it as empty, save for these tiny little specks of nothing captured in the windows. Even the sun seems tiny. It's dizzying: our universe is basically extended void, a vast amount of nothing, with just a few insignificant specks of fire and dust. It is, in a powerful sense which gets lost in the common use of the phrase, awe-inspiring.

And of course the distances vary greatly. It's a matter of moments to walk from the Sun to Mars; each of the other distances gets progressively longer, save for the Neptune - Pluto distance which is shorter (although still long on the Sun - Mars scale). Here is the official map from the Sciencenter web site:

You can get a slight sense of the distances from this map -- but not as well as you can from an ordinary astronomy textbook. What really works is the sculpture itself: putting the entirety on a human scale, so you can feel it, get the variations under your shoes and in your legs.

It is a marvelous memorial for the late, lamented Carl Sagan, who spent his life trying to educate the public about astronomy and science: a beautiful piece of public art that also serves to convey, on a marrow-in-the-bones level, the feeling of awe that our universe can inspire when looked at through science's lens.

But my favorite thing about the planet walk I don't have a photograph of. It isn't on the map; it isn't in Ithaca -- it doesn't even exist yet, and it probably never will. But there has been talk apparently about building a matching, to-scale monolith for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun.

It would be in Hawaii.

I love to imagine that it will be built: making the Sagan Planet Walk one of the largest public sculptures in the world (since, after all, the space between the monoliths is an integral part of the sculpture), and boggling the mind with the true vastness and emptiness of this extraordinary cosmos that we live in.

In any event, next time you are in Ithaca (which, to be sure, is in the middle of nowhere -- it's not even directly on a major interstate -- so it may be a while for most of you) take the time to walk the planet walk. It's a wonderful bit of public art, and worth taking the time to appreciate properly. And a wonderful tribute to an amazing man.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Gays have the same rights as married heterosexuals, but only in civil unions or partnerships rather than marriage in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont).

I don't read the Economist, so I have only this summary to go by. But as far as the U.S. goes, this summary is simply wrong. It's not just in Hawaii and Maine that civil unions have lesser rights than heterosexual marriage; it's in every state of the U.S. In fact, even full-fledged marriage rights in Massachusetts are not equivalent to heterosexual marriage: even in Massachusetts, gay and lesbian citizens are denied equal rights.

This isn't a new point; it's been talked about a lot (one recent example is here). But if the Economist can get this wrong, it's a point that bears repeating.

For the purposes of this post, I'm going to set aside the whole separate-but-equal issue. Nevertheless, it is of course true that even denying the name marriage is a form of discrimination -- a linguistic marker that does nothing but set aside a disfavored group as lesser; it is "a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution." (source) So even if there were no legal ramifications at all, civil marriage as a matter of justice must be made available to gays and lesbians on an equal basis with straight couples.

But again, let's set that aside for now. Let's just talk about specific legal rights.

I don't know the details of state law in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, or Vermont, so I will take the Economist at its word (possibly a mistake) that within state law civil unions have all the legal rights of full marriage. But even if this is the case, it doesn't make civil unions equal to marriage, because in the U.S., federal law also gives rights to married couples. For a couple to be treated as married (or the equivalent) in federal law, the federal government has to recognize them as married (or the equivalent).

But the federal government doesn't. One of the provisions of the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" which President Clinton, to his eternal shame, signed into law is that the federal government is not required to recognize marriages (let alone civil unions) between gays and lesbians which a state might recognize. That is, DOMA doesn't only permit states not to recognize gay and lesbian marriages performed in other states; it also forbids the federal government from doing so.

This means that, for federal purposes, married couples from Massachusetts are treated as single by the U.S. government -- if they happen to be a gay or lesbian couple. And "civil unions" from California, Connecticut, New Jersey, or Vermont are not granted the rights of marriage under federal law either.

What are those rights? Well, a specific example just came up fairly recently when Gerry Studds's spouse was denied pension benefits on precisely these grounds. From the Nashua Telegraph:

For the first time, the federal government is denying death benefits to the spouse of a congressman because he is gay. Former Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass., who became the first openly gay member of Congress when his homosexuality was exposed during a teenage page sex scandal, died early Saturday. He was 69. In 2004 Studds married Dean Hara, 48, after gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. Hara, unlike the spouses of other members of Congress who have died, won’t be receiving any portion of Studds’ estimated annual $114,337 pension. The 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act blocks the federal government from recognizing the 2004 marriage between Studds and Hara.

Until that section of DOMA is overturned by the courts, or revoked by Congress, gay and lesbian couples will be legally discriminated against even in Massachusetts, the one state thus far to treat its gay and lesbian citizens equally. And, of course, even if that section of DOMA is overturned, "civil unions" in the states that have them won't have to be recognized by the federal government.

So don't let anyone say that civil unions are equivalent to marriage. It's not true. In fact, for gay and lesbian citizens, even marriage won't be equivalent to marriage until that section of DOMA is overturned.

There is only one solution to this issue: full equality, without any badge of servitude or other maker of second-class status. And contrary to those who proclaim the role of the states in this matter, this is also something that will have to be granted by the federal government.

Which leads to a speculative postscript: it seems that there is a case to be made against that section of DOMA without overturning the entire thing -- at least this site quotes an ACLU lawyer as saying that

if DOMA were to be challenged, lawyers would solely focus on the part of DOMA that denies gay citizens federal benefits. Left unchallenged would be the portion of DOMA that allows states to refuse recognition to a same-sex marriage performed in another state, out of fear that the legal claim would be rejected, and even if successful might encourage passage of a federal amendment banning gay marriage.

Obviously I would be in favor of overturning the entire thing -- indeed, I think it will happen, sooner or later. But so far as "sooner" goes I can definitely see it being politically easier (and maybe legally easier, although I don't know either way) to eliminate just that section of DOMA. It would preserve for discriminatory states their "right" to discriminate, which might mollify the bigot vote; and that way at least those states that intend to grant their gay and lesbian citizens the full and equal rights to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them -- so far just Massachusetts, but hopefully to be soon joined by others (even maybe my home stateof New York) -- will at least be legally able to do so. It would be of great help to gays and lesbians in those non-discriminating states; it would allow those who are able to vote with their feet and move somewhere that treats them as full citizens; and it would be clarifying. And, maybe, more politically possible in the short run.

This is making the rounds -- I saw the link last night on Whatever before I saw it this morning on Pharyngula -- so I suspect that anyone who's interested has already had this dangled before them. But since a crucial part of my doing this blog is at least pretending that I have some readers who will see stuff for the first time if I link to it, I thought I'd link to this too.

SF author Peter Watts has done a very amusing, half-hour-long powerpoint presentation on the biology and evolution of vampires. It's filled with a lot of very convincing psuedo-science -- not surprisingly, given that Watts is in fact a marine biologist; in fact, P. Z. Myers says that there is "some surprisingly accurate general information about the principles of evolution embedded in all the silliness". Basically, if you think that a power-point presentation about the biology and evolution of vampires sounds fun or funny, you'll love this -- it's very well done. If you don't see the point -- both the humor and the actual (if whimsical) interest -- then don't bother.

I actually met Peter Watts at Readercon last summer, and he's a very nice guy. The powerpoint is an outtake (promotion? spin-off? not sure what the noun is supposed to be) of his fourth and latest SF novel, Blindsight (warning: large file.) -- I think he actually did his vampire powerpoint at Readercon, but I missed it. The vampires described in the powerpoint are featured in Blindsight, and this powerpoint gives (I think) more detail on their underlying biology than is to be found in the novel.

About Blindsight: it's now out in hardcover but, due to some publishing glitches there may or may not be a second printing, and so the thing is actually in short supply. (Publishing makes no sense to me -- I think this is because it more or less makes no sense, but maybe I just don't understand it. (To vampires, no doubt, it would make perfect sense (that's a joke for those who've seen the powerpoint.))) Because of this, Peter Watts just released the entire novel under a Creative Commons licence for free on the web -- so that people can read it even if they can't buy it. Hopefully this will create enough buzz to actually get that second printing to happen. (The CC release has gotten some big-scaleblogattention, which hopefully will lead to increased sales & orders.) I haven't read the novel yet -- I'm waiting to get my hands on a physical copy, since it's too irritating for me to read lengthy fiction on a screen -- but I've read the opening, and I'm really looking forward to it. If you're more screen-tolerant than I, you can go read it now; otherwise, some bookstores still have it -- Amazon seems to -- even if big chains like Borders aren't carrying it. (See above re: publishing makes no sense to me.)

In any event, whether or not you read and/or buy the novel, do check out the powerpoint. It's fun and funny and interesting and just what you might need to cheer you up in a world where Bush is going to stay in Iraq regardless what the commissions, congress or citizens have to say about it.

To (rather loosely) paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, if you want start a meme and stuff, you need to do it regularly.

Last week I introduced the Saturday Systematic X, a variant on the blogosphere tradition of the Friday Random Ten. The basic idea, again, is this: instead hitting "random" on your iPod or equivalent, and blogging the first ten items, you type a word into the search box, and blog howevermany songs come up.

This week, the word is "wish". Rather to my surprise, I got a far shorter list than I did last week with "God"; instead of 17 songs, I only got 5:

1. I Wish You Would, The Yardbirds2. I Wish You Wouldn't Say That, Talking Heads3. More I Cannot Wish You, Frank Loesser4. Wish I Could Stay, Joss Whedon5. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd

Given the tradition of the "wish song" in the musical, I suppose it's fitting that two of the five should be from musicals -- "More I Cannot Wish You" from Guys and Dolls, and "Wish I Could Stay" from the Bufy the Vampire Slayer musical episode... except that neither of those are traditional wish songs. Go figure.

Again, a fun list -- and a fun mix (not the same thing).

And, as before, this is a meme: if you have an iPod and a blog (or the equivalents), consider yourself tagged: do it for yourself -- either on the word "wish" or any other (and it doesn't have to be on Saturday) -- report the results... and don't forget to leave a link in the comments!

Friday, December 15, 2006

Early sun gold-frosted the horizontal upper foliage of the old tree and brought its gnarled limbs into sharp relief, tough brown-gray and crevices of velvet. Only the companion of a bonsai (there are owners of bonsai, but they are of a lesser breed) fully understands the relationship. There is an exclusive and individual treeness to the tree because it is a living thing, and living things change, and there are definite ways in which the tree desires to change. A man sees the tree and in his mind makes certain extensions and extrapolations of what he sees, and sets about making them happen. The tree in turn will do only what a tree can do, will resist to the death any attempt to do what it cannot do, or to do it in less time than it needs. The shaping of a bonsai is therefore always a compromise and always a cooperation. A man cannot create a bonsai, nor can a tree; it takes both and they must understand each other. It takes a long time to do that. One memorizes one’s bonsai, every twig, the angle of every crevice and needle, and, lying awake at night or in a pause a thousand miles away, one recalls this or that line or mass, one makes one’s plans. With wire and water and light, with tilting and with the planting of water-robbing weeds or heavy root-shading ground cover, one explains to the tree what one wants, and if the explanation is well enough made, and there is great enough understanding, the tree will respond and obey—almost. Always there will be its own self-respecting, highly individual variation: Very well, I shall do what you want, but I will do it my own way. And for those variations, the tree is always willing to present a clear and logical explanation, and more often than not (almost smiling) it will make clear to the man that he could have avoided it if his understanding had been better.

It is the slowest sculpture in the world, and there is, at times, doubt as to which is being sculpted, man or tree.

I'd say "so much for those who think that McCain is some sort of Goldwater-style libertarian", except that anyone who still thinks that John "sign off on torture" McCain is a libertarian just isn't paying attention. McCain is someone who wants to be president, and has shown himself willing to do anything, say anything and pander to anybody he needs to to make that happen.

The real question is what will the right-wing blogosphere think of this? They're bloggers too. (Not as many of them have big comment sections or diaries the way DailyKos does... but some do.)

More if/when I see it. If anyone knows of any good actions to take to oppose this, please leave them in comments.

Well, here's a variation: the Saturday Systematic X. It's Saturday, not Friday*; it's systematic, not random, as I'll explain in a minute; and since the system determines the outcome, the number is a variable -- X -- rather than a set number like 10.

Here's how it goes. You pick a word, type that into the search box of iTunes or the equivalent, and read off the list of pieces that are included.

So for the first week -- for no particular reason -- I typed "god" into my search box, and got 17 items, which I here present in alphabetical order by title:

It's systematic, since it depends on entering a word... but it's also random in lots of ways, of course. Not the least is that which items come up are a bit random, since they depend on how the titles were entered -- which in my case was frequently done by that automatic function in iTunes that looks at a CD and figures out the title -- often differently for different disks in a set (e.g. Handel's Messiah above), which I never bother to correct; I have copied them as is above, with all the variations intact). So, for example, Joan Osborne's "One of Us" was entered just as that and not as Joan Osborne, "(What if God Was) One of Us" -- which is how it's listed on the album cover, I think -- and thus doesn't show up. And I love that Ravel shows up for "des pagodes" -- the pagodas -- where, if only alphabetically speaking, God dwells.

Still, a fun list. At least I thought so. A lot of Handel.

It does make a damn strange mix to play (I've been playing it, in random order, as I write this), what with the leaps from song-structured music to snippets of classical music. But I sort of like it.

I may even do this again.

And now this is a meme: if you have an iPod (or the equivalent) and a blog (ditto), consider yourself tagged: do it yourself -- either on the word "god" or any other -- and report the results. (It doesn't have to be on Saturday -- whenever you read this, you're tagged!) And leave a link in the comments!

____________________________* Not for any interesting reason, or even for the alliteration, but because I just thought of it today.

This is a follow-up post to my earlier thoughts about the recent decision by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Jewish Movement regarding the place of gay and lesbian Jews in their movement. But where, in my earlier post, I had a point to make, in this one I don't. Rather, I have a question to ask -- a question which will manifest itself as a constellation of questions but which is, I think, a single question at bottom.

The question arises from the comments of Rabbi Joel Roth -- author of the one of the status-quo-upholding teshuvot accepted in the recent CJLS meeting, who nevertheless resigned from the CJLS to protest the acceptance of the (rather moderate) pro-gay teshuva which they accepted simultaneously. His comments were made during a public discussion from before the meeting, but it was already fairly clear (indeed, it was widely reported) what the outcome was likely to be. The discussion was between Rabbi Roth and Rabbi Elliot Dorff, co-author of the liberal teshuva, and were reported in the Jewish Week's news story on the recent decision as follows:

“The effect of having multiple positions passed will be a sign of the strength of the movement,” [Rabbi Dorff] argued. “We have learned to live and let live.”

Rabbi Dorff said this would mean that some Conservative rabbis will now perform commitment ceremonies that permit the union of same-sex couples and others will not... “Some [Conservative seminaries] may decide to ordain gays and lesbians and others may not,” he explained, adding that they would continue to “live with each other.”

Rabbi Roth strongly disagreed, however.

“It’s simply not true that it will be live and let live,” he argued. “That implies that both positions are equal.”

He suggested that “most young people” are intolerant of the current ban on gay and lesbian leadership and believe their inclusion to be a “moral imperative.”

He noted that after the Conservative movement’s Law Committee voted to ordain women in 1983, its rabbinical school in Manhattan set up an egalitarian minyan in addition to the one it had maintained since the seminary was established in 1886. The non-egalitarian minyan “survived 10 years until the upstairs egalitarian minyan claimed that any Conservative Jew who was not egalitarian was immoral and [therefore] delegitimate. The student body to this day virtually reviles students who go to the non-egalitarian minyan, and if it was up to most of them, it would not exist because it is [considered] immoral.”

“It will only take two years on this issue,” Rabbi Roth predicted, before critics of the permissive position on gays lose out.

There is something strange -- even, in an odd way, affecting -- about these comments. Rabbi Roth not only knows that the demographics are against him, but that "most young people" -- and it seems clear that he actual meant the young people in his own movement -- are not only against him, but feel so strongly on the other side that he fears that within two years the social pressure against his view will make it de facto illegitimate.

Given that he believes that, what does he think he is likely to accomplish on the other side?

Even if his legal reasoning and persuasive power had managed to keep the more inclusive teshuva from being accepted this year, what then? If most young people in his own movement -- even, he seems to suggest, in his own seminary -- find his position not only mistaken but are "intolerant" of it, and believe that including gays and lesbians is a "moral imperative" -- what would his convincing another half-dozen or so influential Rabbis currently on the CJLS do? Surely Roth can't think that upholding the ban on gay and lesbian Rabbis would bring young people around to his position, since the ban is currently in place and they're against it.

So what was he hoping to accomplish? At the best, he would have delayed the full inclusion of gays and lesbians until a time when the current "most young people" became, well, "most people" -- including, presumably, a majority on the CJLS. At worst he would had convinced those who thought that the Conservative Movement was failing in a moral imperative to leave it, and join another, more moral, movement.

Or is that latter option in fact what he wanted -- a sort of Jewish version of what is said to be the current Pope's strategy, purging the institution of insidious liberals to make a smaller but "purer" movement?

Or is he simply upholding what he sees as God's will, in the face of seemingly-inevitable defeat -- hoping, perhaps, for a miracle?

I must admit that generally in such cases I would tend to think that yet another explanation was in play: namely, animus and bigotry so strong that it overrode any tactical considerations or thoughts for the future in a mindless drive to suppress. But one of the co-authors of the more inclusive teshuva, Rabbi Daniel Nevins, has said in a statement that

... none of the committee members uttered anything like animus to gay or lesbian Jews in the entire four years of proceedings. On the contrary, even those most opposed to halakhic change framed their arguments with respect and sympathy for the predicament that gay and lesbian Jews face.

-- and I will take Rabbi Nevins at his word: this was not about animus. But quite honestly, it makes the question all the more puzzling.

I suppose that Rabbi Roth thinks he is simply sticking up for legal standards for their own sake. It is in a way a noble thing to do -- even if the practical ends he seeks are discriminatory and unjust. And I suppose going down with the ship has a certain nobility even an unjust cause.

But what does he think is going to happen?

His comments on the decision about admitting women Rabbis are in some ways even more puzzling. I presume that he doesn't wish that the egalitarian minyan had never been established. (He apparently supported the ordination of women.) But what then? Presumably he simply wishes that both were accorded equal legitimacy.

But then, that's the problem, isn't it? A statement of equality between two options -- one inclusive, one discriminatory -- is inherently unstable. If not discriminating is at all viable, then discrimination becomes unjustifiable. The non-egalitarian minyan has to claim that the egalitarian minyan is against Jewish law; otherwise they're simply a bunch of sexist bastards.

This isn't necessarily intellectually true. A person might say: 'I personally disagree with your evaluation of the legal question on the merits, but I think it is important for you to uphold your own intellectual position and not feel social pressure to change your mind -- even though I will continue to try to convince you that intellectually you should change your mind.' It's a possible intellectual position -- but it's one that's hard to maintain socially. Could such a person justify going to a non-egalitarian minyan -- i.e. a minyan that they thought was discriminating for no good legal reason -- just to help someone else maintain a social function that the second person believed necessary to fulfill their intellectual position (a position which is, again, mistaken in the eyes of the first person)? Well, again, maybe -- but that's even a moral stretch. (If you think they're wrong, is your duty really to help them persist in their error, even against the claims of justice?)

Practically speaking, once both minyanim are seen as an option then, really, only one is: the one with justice on its side.

Which is precisely Rabbi Roth's point. If both tolerance and intolerance are options then, really, only tolerance is an option. So he has to hold his fight against letting gays and lesbians get their foot in the door, since once they do, all of a sudden he is illegitimate.

But as arguments for maintaining the status quo go, it's a pretty piss-poor one. Of course, it's also a common one these days: this is the same argument that (largely Christian) conservatives make in the U.S., when they say that accepting gays discriminates against them. It's false in any rational, just sense of "discriminate". But intolerance can't maintain itself on a level playing field. It has to squash the opposition.

Which is what Rabbi Roth tried to do. He tried to get the committee of older Rabbis, Rabbis who he knew does not represent the movement that they were legislating for -- namely, the one that will exist in the future -- to hold it back. For a time.

It's comparable to a theory that Andrew Sullivan has floated about the amendment that Christian conservatives wish to add to the constitution: that they know that they will soon lose on a state-by-state level (for demographic reasons: in terms of percentages, young people are less bigoted against gays than older ones), and so they are trying to lock their desired outcome into the U.S. constitution where it will be hard to change. I don't think this suggestion of Sullivan's is right; I suspect that the Christian conservatives who support such an amendment genuinely believe it will be part of (or will precipitate) a revival of conservative Christianity which will eventually change the demographics -- or perhaps they are simply counting on a miracle. At any rate, Christian conservatives are hardly the most reality-based bunch around, so it's likely they don't give much credence to the demographics.

But Rabbi Roth does: he said so himself. And nothing he's said seems to indicate that he thinks that maintaining the ban will produce a swing in its favor. (The only such scenario that seems at all plausible -- that the demographics switch because upholding the ban leads to a mass exodus of the pro-gay faction from the Conservative Movement -- was entirely my speculation; I have no reason to think that Rabbi Roth expects or hopes such a thing will happen.)

It's hard to maintain a position of intolerance when tolerance is an option. Of course Rabbi Roth doubtless feels that he is right on the intellectual merits -- that halakah, and through it God, forbids the sanctioning of any non-celibate gay or lesbian life. But what do you do when you've so signally failed to convince the next generation of your intellectual point of view?

It's one thing to fight from a minority intellectual position; I do it all the time. You hope to convince others, in time, of the rightness of your view. But when the intellectual divide matches onto a generational one, the fight seems basically hopeless. Your opponents will win, in the end.

Is there really a point in making them wait until you're dead?

As I said, I oppose Rabbi Roth on this issue; I am glad that gay and lesbian Jews will now be allowed to be (nearly) full participants in the Conservative Jewish Movement, even though I no longer attend services with any regularity. But reading his comments made me spare a moment to think of Rabbi Roth and the loosing side -- for I think he's probably right and that his side was not equally accepted this week, but took the first step to a larger loss, even if he's wrong about how swiftly it will happen -- and wonder what I would do in his shoes. Would I go down fighting for a cause which is not only most likely doomed, but which is increasingly seen (correctly, of course, in my actual view) as a fundamentally unjust stance?

Friday, December 08, 2006

This week, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Jewish Movement accepted threeteshuvot (legal opinions about Jewish law, singular teshuva) about the status of gays and lesbians in Jewish law and in the Conservative movement. (More information here and here.) Because of the rules of the Conservative movement, all three opinions are now acceptable options for individual rabbis and institutions (such as Conservative Jewish seminaries). Two of those opinions simply re-stated the status quo -- i.e., gays and lesbians are tref (although we shouldn't go out of our way to be mean about it) -- and hence aren't particularly newsworthy. The third opinion, however, accepted (with a caveat) gays and lesbians, welcoming them (almost-but-not-quite) fully into the Conservative movement, and saying that they should be allowed to become Conservative rabbis, and that their permanent relationships should be celebrated (while side-stepping the issue of whether they are "marriages" under Jewish law).

There's a lot to say about this -- about which the most basic thing to say is simply that this is a serious and important step towards justice and equality for gay and lesbian Jews. The side of good and right won this week; justice was pursued.

But here are some other points to make about it. This post will begin by addressing one of them; if I feel inspired/up to it, I'll do some follow-up posts on other aspects of the issue. (Update: I now have a second post on the topic here.)

It begins with the "caveat" I mentioned above. Because even aside from the question of marriages -- which the liberal teshuva simply punts on -- the "caveat" is that the liberal teshuva still holds anal sex between men to be prohibited. This is (basically, simplifying greatly) so they can still uphold the biblical verses Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Their opinion (online in a pdf file (via Jspot)) argues -- credibly, so far as I can tell, but I'm not a rabbi and am hardly expert in these matters -- that the biblical prohibition originally was interpreted to apply only to anal sex between men, and that the extension of the prohibition to all gay sex, and to lesbian sex, was a rabbinical extension of the basic biblical law. Since (still simplifying) it's easier to overrule rabbis than God, they hold that our current knowledge about homosexuality justifies overruling the rabbinical extensions but not the underlying law.

Now, aside from the question of the rulings legal reasoning (about which I'm not competent to judge although, based on a quick reading of it, they present a serious argument), and aside from the question of whether such a ruling really does full justice to gays and lesbians (as we must strive to do), a lot of people -- primarily, I suspect, straight people -- are fundamentally confused about it. To quote the questions asked one blogger:

One person asked me why the rabbis picked on what gay men do, but had nothing to say about lesbians?A few wondered how gay men can be considered equals if they are not allowed to have gay sex?

Again, the questions of the differing treatment of lesbians, and the ongoing question of the status of gay men, are good ones. But there is another point here, something which both questions assume, but which simply isn't true: that anal sex is "what gay men do"; that if men can't have anal sex, they can't have gay sex; or, as the above-linked blogger titled his post, "Gay Men are OK, But Not Gay Sex"

Now, I will admit that as a straight man in a monogamous straight marriage, I'm probably the last person on earth to talk about this. But since I haven't seen anyone else make this point, I'll weigh in on it. (Update: After I wrote this, I saw at least one other blogger had made this point, although more briefly than I do.)

Anal sex between men is not all gay male sex; it is not (all of) "what gay men do".

This is, I think, a misconception that results from applying the cultural model of straight sex to gay sex. (Please add caveats about how different cultures vary, none of these models are inevitable, what I am saying applies only to our culture, that there are exceptions even within our culture, etc., to taste.) In straight sex, intercourse -- vaginal intercourse -- is the end-point, the main event, the real thing. Other sex -- petting, oral sex, whatever else that "straight couples do" -- is foreplay: it's not "real". That's why you get straight couples who "do everything but" -- it's because intercourse is the real thing, and everything else is leading-up.

But this isn't true for gay sex. Gay sex -- and I am relying on the reports of friends, books I've read, and so forth here -- has a much less defined model. Some gay men focus their sexual energies on anal sex. But many don't. To take just one example, SF writer Samuel R. Delany, who has written a lot of non-fiction which is explicit about his own sexual practices and desires. Delany -- despite a life that most people would describe as very active, even promiscuous -- never has anal sex: his sex life is based around oral sex.

This is a point that a lot of straights -- particularly homophobes, who often seem oddly obsessed with anal sex, but I think a lot of sympathetic straights too -- get wrong. Thus to them the idea that a ruling might exclude anal sex sounds equivalent to saying that gay sex isn't okay. But it isn't.

Here's another way to think about it -- a bit exaggerated in the other direction, but probably a useful corrective. Imagine a ruling that straight couples couldn't have anal sex. Now, a lot of straight couples do have anal sex, so this wouldn't be meaningless. But it wouldn't prohibit straight sex, even if it would affect the sex life of many straight couples (if observed).

Or, another way to think about it: imagine a ruling that straight couples couldn't have sex while the woman is menstruating, nor for a week after. This would make a lot of straight couples -- probably a large majority (although who the hell knows) -- technically in violation of the law. But you couldn't tell, simply by the fact that you knew a couple, whether or not they were following this rule. Certainly straight sex is possible within the rule.

In fact, you don't have imagine this ruling: it exists. This is a basic notion of Jewish law, known as the laws of nidah. The polite thing to do in observant Jewish circles is to assume that Jews are in compliance with them -- not to quiz them before giving them a Torah honor, for example. But many of them might not be. The point is that you can't deduce from the fact that someone is in a straight couple whether or not they are violating a basic law of Jewish sexuality.

The same is true for gay Jewish couples. You can't tell from the fact that they're in a gay relationship that they're violating Leviticus 18:22 (on the anal-sex prohibition only interpretation of it), even if they are having sex. You'd actually have to quiz them about their sex life. Nor is it ridiculous and unthinkable to think that a married gay couple might not have anal sex, because there are a lot of gay men who express their sexuality in other ways. Indeed, some are almost certainly already following this rule anyway.

A lot of gay men at this point will be sniggering, because I am going on and on about the obvious. But this seems to be something that a lot of straights -- even sympathetic straights -- don't know. So ideas such as the one just put forward by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards sound like they are asking gay men to behave like teenagers saving their technical virginity forever. But that's simply an inapplicable model.

I'm not saying the rule is meaningless, nor defending it on moral grounds, nor saying that it does sufficient justice to gay men. But it is worth noting that it does not say that (all) gay sex isn't okay, just that some gay sex isn't; that there really are gay couples whose sex life doesn't involve anal sex. As long as straights get this wrong, these arguments will sound a lot sillier than, in fact, they are.

If you want to criticize this ruling on legal grounds, or religious grounds, or moral grounds, or gay-rights grounds, go ahead. But on its own terms it does make sense, and straights should understand that.